Magnificent Seven | Alpine Beer Company

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Notes / Commercial Description:
Brewed for City Beer Store in San Francisco, CA in celebration of their seventh anniversary. Magnificent Seven uses seven different malts, seven different hops with seven different additions, and is 7.7% ABV.

Reviews by rboinski:

Appearance: Pours a murky dark brown with yellow highlights. Has about a 2 finger slightly yellow head when pouring out 12 oz.

Smell: The smell has so much depth. Immediate pineapple and tropical hop character with a nice light earthiness, absolutely awesome. Supporting the hops is a nice sweet malt character. This is truly world class.

Taste: A little sweetness but finishes dry. The hop character is very tropical, with pineapple as the most prominent. There is an explosion of flavors in the mouth on this one, and they are all competing but no one quite takes over. The malt character is really nice and supportive, I really feel that there is rye in here and it adds a nice spicy character that compliments the earthiness.

Mouthfeel: Perfect IPA mouthfeel. Nice and thick which I think is helped by what I can only assume is rye in the malt bill. Perfect carbonation. Excellent!

Overall: What a great, complex beer to celebrate city beer stores 7th anniversary. This is an absolutely awesome beer and I wish I had another.

More User Reviews:

Hazy burnt amber and light copper. Creamy, moderately-sized off white head. Great retention and a very sticky IPA. This leaves irregular ribbons of sticky lace left down the pint glass. As usual, Alpine makes a gorgeous IPA.

The aroma is well balanced. This is definitely hoppy, though has good amounts of sweet, bready malt character as well. A bit of pine, floral notes, and a mild citrus rind character butted up against mild caramel and biscuit.

The flavor is similar to the aroma. Moderate bitterness, citrus zest and mild pine, with good amounts of caramel malt. A bit of a bread or biscuit character as well. Very drinkable.

Medium bodied with moderate to high carbonation.

An IPA without an identity. Duet, Nelson, and Pure Hoppiness are such special beers because they do certain things, individually, remarkably well. This seems like a well-rounded, drinkable, balanced, though tasty, fresh IPA. I'd drink anything from the year-round Alpine IPA lineup before ordering another pint of this (very good IPA).

T - Almost perfect balance of malts and hops. Definitely dominant hop flavor with an incredibly complex profile. Very delicious. One of the best tasting DIPAs I have ever had.

M - Extremely smooth and easy to drink. The head retains the nice carbonation and flavor throughout.

O - Like I said, clearly one of the best tasting DIPAs I have ever had. I bought 6 bottles at the 7th Anniversary at City Beer Store in SF. I had one on that day too, but did not take notes. I decided to put this up against 3 other DIPAs in a blind taste test on my birthday. The first place DIPA, which I thought was the Mag 7, turned out to be PtE. But the Mag 7 was a very, very close 2nd. The other two unnamed local DIPAs were crap next to these two. Since this was brewed only once, for the CBS anniversary, I doubt I will ever get to try it again, so for that, I would rate it higher than PtE.

Appearance: Amber with some haziness. The body is capped by a finger of clinging froth.

Smell: A stonefruit medley of peach and apricot, with pineapple in the peripheral. Nelson sauvin is prominent, bringing gooseberry and white grape must. There's a hint of diacetyl that works nicely with the nelson hops, bringing to mind a buttery white wine. Malt is present, moreso than usual with Alpine - in particular there's a rustic rye character.

Palate: Pineapple, sweet gooseberry jam and peach hit the tongue first, bringing layered sweetness. Earthier rye notes pop out mid-palate. There's a slight peppery spiciness to the finish, and a mild earthy biterness. Medium-full in body, more hefty than crisp, though it's an easy drinker nonetheless. Nelson sauvin steals the show here, to such an extend that this pretty much feels like a slight variation on Alpine's Nelson IPA, only with a bit more malt sweetness and body to it. Hard to complain about that. I wouldn't say that this is better than Alpine's year-round hoppy offerings, but it is still leagues ahead of most other IPAs out there.